SAUGUS — It was more of the same in the town with all five Board of Selectmen incumbents retaining their seats but the School Committee saw some changes after Tuesday night’s election.
The School Committee race featured only two challengers as Leigh Gerow (1,586) a mother with students in the Saugus Public Schools, and Vincent Serino (2,021), a former School Committee member, battled against incumbents Thomas Whittredge (2,090), Ryan Fisher (1,807), Arthur Grabowski (1,157), John Hatch (1,846), and Joseph “Dennis” Gould (1,661).
Grabowski will not be returning to the School Committee after serving for 10 of the last 12 years. He will be replaced by Serino, who received 2,021 votes. Whittredge, Fisher, Hatch, and Gould retained their positions.
Serino received the second-most votes, only trailing Whittredge by 69 votes.
The Board of Selectmen race featured 10 candidates running for five seats. Chairman Anthony Cogliano (2,439), Vice Chair Corinne Riley (1,710), and members Jeffrey Cicolini (1,755), Debra Panetta (2,116), and Michael Serino (1,709) all sought reelection while Elizabeth Marchese (1,308), Darren McCullough (1,191), Domenic Montano (1,250), Leo Fonseca Jr. (726), and Harry Young (876) fought to inject some change into the board.
Cogliano retained his seat as chair by a decent margin, as early results had him first in all but one precinct. Coming in second was Panetta with 2,116 votes ― meaning that she will replace Riley as vice chair. All the incumbents retained their position on the board.
“I’m very happy about coming in first again and retaining my spot as chairman,” Cogliano said. “We have a great board who work well together and we got a lot of things on the horizon, with schools coming offline and also hoping to get a new West Side fire station, (and) I hope to announce a Wheelabrator deal in the coming weeks, which would be great for our town. So we have a lot of work ahead of us, but I’m happy that the five people are coming back.”
He also wished the challengers the best of luck moving forward.
